Girl in molestation case recants testimony

[The Straight Story]

Girl in molestation case recants testimony

Last Updated: Wednesday, Dec 10 2008 9:07 PM

A young girl whose testimony helped convict a 24-year-old Bakersfield man of child molestation charges earlier this year recanted her trial testimony at a dramatic hearing Wednesday.

And there’s more expected today, said Deputy Public Defender Michael Webb.

In testimony that could taint the August conviction and force a new trial for Justin James Erbacher, the young girl said Wednesday she lied in her earlier testimony when she said Erbacher molested her.

Erbacher was found guilty in August of nine felony counts, including continuous sexual abuse of a child, oral copulation with a child, sodomy of a victim under 14, and other crimes.

He is facing up to 100 years in prison at a sentencing set for Dec. 23 — but Webb has asked the judge to grant a new trial based on the new evidence.

http://www.bakersfield.com/hourly_news/story/635088.html

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

1. The prosecutors in cases like these should be jailed for life

(Since I oppose the death penalty)

[mondo joe]

2. Agreed. I remember the cases from 80's in which so many innocent people

were charged and imprisoned.

Absolutely terrible.

[TahitiNut]

4. East Wenatchee, Washington.

Lives totally destroyed ... on the basis of lies.

[mondo joe]

6. I remember many years ago reading one story in the Village Voice about a young woman

who was found guilty on the most ridiculous non-evidence and imprisoned.

And the McMartin family, ruined.

All just tragic.

[ronnykmarshall]

33. The DA in Kern County is a pig.

[TahitiNut]

3. It'd be interesting if they found that the DNA evidence was planted by the police.

Very interesting.

[LisaL]

5. How would they get the guy's semen?

For DNA comparison, people provide saliva, not semen. What a strange story.

[mondo joe]

8. Did it say they did the DNA match by semen???

The only semen reference I saw was "Semen identified by DNA tests as a statistically certain match with Erbacher was found in a victim’s bedroom in a house in which Erbacher never lived, Marshall said after the trial."

[LisaL]

34. No, the article says they found the guy's semen in the home

of the alleged victim. The poster suggested the police could have planted it. However, to plant something, police would need access to it, and it's not likely they would have access to the guy's semen.

[mondo joe]

36. Ah, understood. Thank you. NT

[CoffeeCat]

7. When an alleged victim recants...

...it doesn't always mean that they were lying. This man's semen was found in one of the
alleged victims bedrooms.

Sometimes, going through a trial is traumatizing and devastating to victims, who are
often very young.

I've sat in support groups with victims who told their stories in great detail. These
victims spend months (often years) in therapy and in support groups. It is not unusual
for victims to agree to help prosecutors, and then back out. Most of these victims
are at the swirling epicenter of a major trauma.

Please remember that perpetrators who molest children go to incredible lengths to keep
their victims silent. They spend years brainwashing them into believing that they
will never be believed, that they will be in trouble if they tell and that their pets,
parents or other family members will die if they speak out. Even if a child has law
enforcement on their side--they've been trained to be terrified and to view the
perpetrator as all powerful.

I just wanted to remind people that when victims recant--it doesn't always mean that
their stories are untrue and that the defendant didn't molest.

[woo me with science]

9. Yes, some victims do recant.

But young people also do lie, for a lot of reasons...for the attention associated with being a victim (there is tremendous secondary gain for someone predisposed by personality problems to take the victim role), or because of vindictiveness and anger toward people they dislike, or for other reasons (e.g., pressure by one parent against another in a divorce case).

And let's not forget those who have been taught to believe in false memories by quack therapists. No, it's absolutely not a rare phenomenon. Go to any major city, and you will have no trouble at all finding "survivor groups" filled with women who spend their lives unearthing new "memories" of abuse on a regular basis - abuse they never suspected until they became associated with these malignant groups and therapists. There is an entire industry of trauma therapists who subscribe to the ridiculous notion that doubting your memories and believing you made it all up is a normal stage in the process of "remembering" for those who have been abused. Tragically, recovered memory "survivors" often self-select into the therapy industry, and some of them even have access to adolescents and children as clients.

Yes, some actual victims recant. However, false accusations can and do happen, much more often than people like to admit.

[Sherman A1]

10. Agreed and Well Said.

Having gone through a very, very ugly divorce, that was in part encouraged by the "False Memory" psycho babble, I appreciate your well written post and commentary.


:toast:

[woo me with science]

15. Thanks for speaking out.

It is important that these stories be told.

I work with clinics/hospitals and insurance companies to identify therapists who deal in recovered memories before they are hired. I also advocate in court for children who have actually been abused. Nothing enrages me more than knowing that the therapy resources these children sorely need are infested with the recovered memory practitioners and usurped by women who discovered at age 30 that they were molested in satanic cults.

[CoffeeCat]

11. Antfarm...

You are notorious for shoveling out your opinions on this matter. I've had several conversations with you
about my own sexual abuse, and my memories of sexual abuse that did not surface until I was in my early 30's.

You've mentioned before that you have a sister who alleges that she was sexually abused by a member of
your family, and that she too--had memories that surfaced later. You don't believe your sister, so
you continue to speak directly to other DUers who were sexually abused as children--and you degrade
their healing and their pain.

It DIDN'T happen in YOUR family--therefore no one else in the entire world has a legitimate story when it
comes to traumatic memories that surface later in life.

You insinuate that therapists like mine are "quacks" and you demean support groups as "malignant." You're
still putting the word 'survivor' in quotes, as if to demean people who have the courage to see themselves
as more than victims--after being sexually abused as children.

As I've told you before, I had memories surfacing BEFORE I entered therapy. No "quack" worked me over and
no "malignant group" created delusions in my head.

As I've also mentioned before, my memories of sexual abuse involved other children as well as adults. I
called two of the children--who are now grown adults--and asked them if what I was remembering really happened.
These people validated the traumatic sexual abuse that I was just now remembering. I didn't remember one
scintilla of the sexual abuse that went on during a six-year period, but others WHO WERE THERE and who were
also abused--backed up what had surfaced in my memories.

That's when I sought a therapist. Stories like mine, unfortunately, do happen. I spent five years in therapy
and it was excruciatingly painful. Looking back, I think I was pretty courageous to have chosen to go down
the difficult path of healing--when denial is so much easier.

It takes a lot of courage to heal from this pain, and it doesn't help matters when vindictive, ill-informed
people like you make it even more difficult to talk about what happened.

Am I supposed to be ashamed of how my brain processed traumatic events as a child? My perpetrators told me
to shut the hell up about the abuse. What you're doing is further encouraging sexual abuse victims to be ashamed
about the way they coped with the abuse. I'm supposed to feel like a failure because I went to a support group
and shared my story? I'm supposed to be ashamed because I decided to heal?

Your opinions are unfounded and clearly driven by something other than reality.

People like you have absolutely NO scientific evidence for what you say, yet you'll spout off pseudo-psycho babble
as if your opinion is fact. It's not.

You've got such a hearty opinion on the illegitimacy of "false memories", yet the entire "False Memory Syndrome" has
no scientific basis whatsoever. "False Memory Syndrome" has been all but debunked. It's not even
a psychological or medical term. It's a term concocted by the "False Memory Syndrome" Foundations co-founder, who
is an admitted alcoholic and someone who was accused of molestation by his daughter.

Repressed memories do happen. It happened to me.

You've got an agenda, and you like to pick fights with other survivors, because you can't resist projecting
your own family situation onto other survivors. You're angry at your sister and you choose not to believe her, so you
have to degrade and attempt to shame all of us.

I don't know if your sister endured sexual abuse. But I do know that I did, and I also know that my previously
repressed memories have been corroborated by others who were there. That is indisputable. Children do repress
traumatic events. You can deny your own sister's experience all you want, but I won't allow you to blanket
all survivors in the cheap and bitter way that you do. Repressed memories of sexual abuse DO HAPPEN.

I know because it happened to me.

[tpsbmam]

12. Wish I could K&R your post, TwoSparkles....

a very eloquent and powerful testament for those who've been abused and have repressed those memories, and who've later had the courage to face up to the ugly history of abuse. And who might stand a chance of educating those who dismiss this very real (and not uncommon) psychological defense that abuse often engenders.

[woo me with science]

13. Twosparkles,

I know you are a Believer, and it does not surprise me that you attack anyone who posts a critical view of recovered memories. When you begin a post with the phrase, "shoveling out your opinions on this matter," your own emotional investment in this topic is exceedingly clear.

I don't expect to persuade you or any other survivor who has already built her life around recovering memories. I know you are well beyond that at this point. I write these posts for others....to counter the woo and the myth and to inform those who are not aware of it to what extent this malignant garbage still exists in our therapy system. I encourage anyone interested in this topic to search my previous posts on the topic, because I have argued these 1995 talking points many times.

I will certainly continue to post about this mental health tragedy. Most people believe that the repressed memory debacle in therapy faded away after cases were debunked and therapists punished in the 1990's. They don't realize that it is still very much alive, although better concealed and using different terminology than the past.

Thank you for your post and for demonstrating for others the need for continued attention to this cancer in mental health.

[CoffeeCat]

14. My problem with you...

...is that you insist that your OPINION, which is based on nothing legitimate or scientific, is true for
every single survivor of sexual abuse out there.

And you demean and degrade sexual abuse survivors.

You do all of this, while I continue to tell you that my repressed memories of sexual abuse, were
recalled later in life and were corroborated by two witnesses.

You refuse to acknowledge reality, and you dismiss the pain and you ignore the truth---with a very
robotic, compassion-lacking manner.

You are wrong. You are like someone who denies the existence of cancer. Then when someone arrives
to tell you about their own cancer, you still scream, "It's all bunk! You have an agenda!" ...or
an "emotional investment" or whatever.

You do not listen. You are so hell bent on your own version of reality--that you do not care about
the truth.

I'm healed, sweetheart. I had an "emotional investment" in being a good mother to my children and
living a healthy life. I got there by doing some pretty hard work.

I'm sorry that you're so closed down, but you will never be able to deny what happened to me and you
will never succeed in degrading the way I coped as a child.

[woo me with science]

16. And you

speak from the other side of the coin.

The difference is that my opinion is based on science.

[KittyWampus]

19. Science says there is no such thing as repressed memories? You need to reread what you wrote

and get some perspective.

[Nikki Stone1]

17. Repressed memories do exist and do emerge. Quack shrinks also exist.

One fact does not cancel out the other. Both things do exist.

In this case in the OP, I am not so convinced that the child was lying to begin with. Kids are not adults and often can't withstand the pain and unpleasantness of having to live with going to trial. Sometimes the parents get sick of it and encourage the kid to recant so it can be all over and life can go back to "normal." And sometimes, kids do lie, although they are usually a little older when they do. I know the case of a 13 year old boy who lied about a teacher "touching him" because he was mad at the teacher. The kid was already in trouble for semi-criminal stuff and got mad when the teacher showed some backbone and sent him to the counselor. So, yes, lying can and does happen.

But children are also coerced into silence: that happens as well. This is not something to "take sides" about. One gives children the benefit of the doubt and looks for evidence. In this case, the semen was at the crime scene, so I am inclined to believe that the kid got tired of being a victim or got intimidated. You have to take these things on a case by case basis and not have a knee jerk reaction.

[woo me with science]

18. There is no scientific evidence for the concept of repression.

It is a Freudian concept and not compatible with current neuroscience. Yes, people can and do forget abuse incidents. However, people do not forget an entire, savagely abusive childhood and then recall it at age 30. There is no science to support the myths that the survivor movement lives by.

I think you make good sense about this case. Yes, children can be intimidated into silence, and I did not mean to suggest that recovered memories were operative in this case at all. However, it is important to counter the "survivor" myth that children never lie about such things and to be aware that there is an entire therapy industry out there that is churning out victims on a daily basis. And these people accuse.

[Nikki Stone1]

20. Current neuroscience has a long way to go. They are still building theoretical models

and often they are based on pre-existing prejudices. For example, the entire idea that the brain makes a "representation" of what it perceives is being challenged from within cognitive science. Much of the "representation" idea was a misunderstanding of an old article and, I believe, a prejudice from philosophy (Kant, in particular).

I'm with you on Freud being questionable. I have never been terribly fond of him to begin with.

However, the phenomenon of lost or repressed memories of trauma does occur; why it occurs we don't know. I myself went through a car accident, and like a lot of other people, have no memory of it at all. One minute I was driving toward a green light at an intersection, the next minute I was in a dream state with no clue where I was or why. A good 10 minutes had passed in the interim. The accident was not my fault--I was hit hard by some college kid using a cell phone and driving way too fast. (Thank God there were witnesses.) But I have no memory of the incident at all. I know it happened, there's a police report, and I had to hire lawyers because the damages were high, but I still have zero memory of it. I don't know if it will ever emerge.

Don't completely discount traumatic blackouts (repressed memories); they do happen. I agree with you that a lot of quacks made a lot of money out of it.

By the way, Freud's idea of repression was used AGAINST at least one vicim of childhood molestation. Anna O, his most famous patient, was actually a victim of childhood sexual abuse. Because Freud (and his colleagues) didn't want to believe it, Freud developed the concept of repression: that Anna O was repressing her infantile sexual feelings towards her father and that this came out in the "neurosis" of her alleged memories about her sexual abuse. Thank God the woman left treatment with the boneheaded Freud and went to a clinic (I believe in Switzerland) where a doctor did believe her. Anna O's problem was not repression but quite the opposite. Her memories were quite clear and she was scarred from the experience.

This said, I wouldn't totally discout the idea of traumatic memory blackouts. Each case has to be looked at individually.

[woo me with science]

24. You likely experienced post-traumatic amnesia related to a mild brain injury,

which is very common in automobile accidents. That is very different from the concept of massive repression of an entire childhood based on psychological factors.

[Nikki Stone1]

26. I don't know how different it actually is

and I remain open minded on the subject of traumatic memory issues. At some point, we will understand memory well enough to know how construction of a memory at the time of the event is different from the creation of false memory.

[woo me with science]

28. The difference is very clear to neurologists. nt

[KittyWampus]

21. You have a problem. There is no question memory repression happens. The questions

relevant to this thread are:

how are those memories recovered?
how reliable are those memories?

It makes sense to ask those two questions because traumatic memories are different than memories imprinted by nontraumatic events.

It has to do with the specific emotional force of an event registering in our memory and how that emotional force or lack of force interferes with how our brain functions in registering information.

Generally speaking, repressed memories were recorded with an emotional distance. When they arise later on, the Subject has sketchy details due to that emotional distance and thus tends to build a narrative to flesh out the bare bones of a traumatic event.

It's in that narrative building that things can go awry.

But summarily saying there are no repressed memories of traumatic events like childhood abuse and that those memories don't later on resurface is fucked up.

Here's a bit from Wikipedia, I'm no going to waste time refuting you. I'm just posting this for other DU'ers who might have an open mind. You are obviously a zealot.


Van der Kolk and Fisler's research shows that traumatic memories are retrieved, at least at first, in the form of mental imprints that are dissociated. These imprints are of the affective and sensory elements of the traumatic experience. Clients have reported the slow emergence of a personal narrative that can be considered explicit (conscious) memory. The level of emotional significance of a memory correlates directly with the memory's veracity. Studies of subjective reports of memory show that memories of highly significant events are unusually accurate and stable over time. The imprints of traumatic experiences appear to be qualitatively different from those of nontraumatic events. Traumatic memories may be coded differently than ordinary event memories, possibly because of alterations in attentional focusing or the fact that extreme emotional arousal interferes with the memory functions of the hippocampus.<22>
Although the science of repressed memory is limited, a few studies have suggested that memories of trauma that are forgotten and later recalled have a similar accuracy rate as trauma memories that had not been forgotten.<2>

[woo me with science]

25. Again, I ask that those interested in this topic

search my other posts for more detailed discussion of these issues and recommendations for further reading. I talk at length in some of these posts about the use of flawed studies by survivors to try to legitimize the recovered memory process and the extensive debunking of these studies that has occurred in the past decade.

[CoffeeCat]

27. No one had a problem when soldiers repressed...

...memories, had delayed recall--and openly discussed how they unearthed horrible memories of
war after they returned home.

No one attacked the soldiers for repressing traumatic memory, and for having PTSD.

But when survivors of sexual abuse are traumatized into repressing some or all of their abuse, they
are attacked.

There is a fringe group---this "False Memory Syndrome" ilk that was started by a man who was accused
of molesting his daughter. He is also an alcoholic. "False Memory Syndrome"--the linchpin of this
movement--is not even a legitimate scientific term. There is no evidence that false memory syndrome
exists. It's jargon, intended to legitimize attacks on sexual abuse survivors.

Do some children lie? Are there some bad therapists out there? Of course...yes, to both questions.

However, none of that nullifies the fact that some survivors of sexual abuse repress all or part
of what happened to them.

It's a fact that repression happened, because it happened to me. I won't apologize for the way I coped
as a child, and I won't be shamed into silence because someone with their own agenda, desperately wants
to believe that repression never happens.

I'm willing to acknowledge reality--that maybe some therapists dug too deep, or that sometimes children lie.
Or that sometimes bitter women make false accusations against their husbands in nasty divorce cases.

These unfortunate realities do not nullify ALL cases of repression. That's just basic common sense.

I encourage any survivor of abuse--who had delayed recall--to respect what your mind did for you and
to not feel ashamed or bullied into feeling bad because of how you coped with trauma as a child.

[woo me with science]

29. You are simply wrong,

Nonsense. There are cases of forgetting, and there are cases of amnesia that are biologically based. There is no such thing as repression and "dissociation" of an entire childhood filled with savage sexual abuse. Despite years of this nonsense, we still have not one documented case of such a childhood. Despite the thousands and thousands of "survivors" who claim to have experienced such childhoods, we have evidence for not a single one.

Not a single one.

The trauma charlatans grasp at everything they can. They distort real science, picking pieces here and there to try to make their theories sound scientific, just like the UFO abductees do and just like the past life practitioners. They keep bringing up discredited studies from the 80's and 90's despite the fact that they have been methodologically savaged. They point to studies of children who have been actually abused as proof that terrible things happen, conveniently ignoring the fact that these children didn't repress. They claim "repression" in groups of children who were too young at the time of the abuse to encode the memories in the first place. They pick and choose and find evidence of this and that incident that was forgotten. But they cannot provide proof of a single documented case that actually resembles what they all claim for themselves....an entire childhood full of savage torture and abuse that was forgotten as it happened, and uncovered only in adulthood.

It is crap. University scientists know it is crap. The practitioners themselves hide what they do from their colleagues and disguise diagnoses for insurance companies, because they know they will be shamed if what they are actually doing is revealed.

Even survivors, early in the process, often know it is crap. That is why so many of them argue with their therapists about making it all up. They are told that such doubting is part of the process. It takes time and a lot of practice to rewrite your entire life story.

It is a criminal shame.

[woo me with science]

31. And regarding the soldiers...

I have written about this on DU before, too.

We need mental health parity desperately and full care for our soldiers, but we need it with the caveat that it will be restricted to evidence-based cures by practitioners who actually know the difference between biologically-based retrograde amnesia and pseudoscience. People don't realize how infested the trauma industry is with recovered memory charlatans, and that these people are now getting their claws into veterans who deserve top quality health care, not voodoo.

The field of trauma is steeped in woo garbage more than almost any other field in medicine or psychology. The list of jargon and "techniques" used by these clowns reads like the astrology forum here at DU....blather about EMDR, tapping, "body memories," and dream interpretation. We owe it to our soldiers to clean house now.

[BlueIris]

23. Great post, and thanks for sharing these painful experiences.

I wish more people on this website could ditch their denial about the reality of the child sexual abuse pandemic.

[LisaL]

35. Either way, how ethical is it to keep the guy in prison when

his accuser apparently now claims she made it up? At the very least, one would think he deserves a new trial.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

22. This kind of thing is maddening.

Either an innocent man has been sent through Hell or a child molester is going to get away free. And one may never know what the truth is.

The world sucks.

[kiva]

30. You said in 2 sentences what I've been thinking since reading this OP.

[Name removed]

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